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How #scamaware are you? The A-Z of Fraud.
Scams and Fraud affect around 50% of the UK’s adult population, that’s around a whopping 30 Million of us! But what are the dangers and would you know what to look out for? Are we ourselves responsible for allowing it ?
Scam, con, swindle, extortion, sham, double-cross, hoax, cheat, ploy, ruse, hoodwink, confidence trick, all words we use to describe fraud, you have probably heard all these and more, but do you know the different methods used by the fraudsters?
Action Fraud publish an A – Z of the different Frauds and Scams used everyday, below is a small selection you have probably seen before,such as ID theft, Lottery Scams, Mass Mailing and Spamming, but what about the others?
Would you know the difference between phishing, vishing and smishing? Who has heard of tabnapping or botnetting?
Make sure you are #scamaware and read up on the different types of Fraud to help prevent you becoming a victim. Take, for example, what should be straight forward, looking for and buying your next car. On top of the usual pitfalls of avoiding buying a pile of junk, held together by body filler and newspaper and more oil leaks than the Deepwater Horizon, there are now a myriad of obstacles to negotiate. Phishing, account take over, money mules, money laundering, advance fee fraud, auction fraud, ID theft, overpayment fraud and the biggest kick in the teeth, Fraud Recovery Fraud, to name just a few. If you have been a victim or suspect fraud/attempted fraud of any kind no matter how small REPORT IT TO ACTION FRAUD!
Prompted by the increase in Online Vehicle Purchase Fraud victims appearing on the LegalBEAGLES consumer forum and in conjunction with the Anti Fraud work we carry out, we decided to dig deeper. I wrote to the City of London Police to request information about Online Vehicle Purchase Fraud and the extent of the effect to the UK consumers, businesses and others. The figures were quite staggering, with over £17.8M being lost through online listing platforms such as eBay, Auto Trader, Gumtree etc. who despite issuing warnings to buyers still fail to get their message across. Coincidentally? Days before I received the figures CoLP issued a press release highlighting the numbers.
In reality this probably only represents approximately 10% of the true extent as many victims fail to report it or reports are incorrectly processed or categorised bringing the estimated losses to almost £180M, a healthy incentive for the fraudsters to develop new methods to catch us out, knowing their chances of being caught are minimal. So far only a tiny handful of those responsible have been identified and prosecuted, hardly a deterrent as they know the resources available to identify and combat it are limited.
So who is to blame? The unwitting victim, the listing platforms, the highly organised crime groups, the banks or the Police & Government?
In truth it is a combination of “all the above”, but why?
The Unwitting Victim?
Let us consider the old adage ” if it looks too good to be true it probably is! “ a phrase we all are aware of or should be.
During a recent meeting with the National Crime Agency’s Economic Crime Command it was summed up in the following way…
….you are in the pub discussing buying a new car and someone hiding behind a mask were to approach you and tell you he had exactly what you were looking for in his garage down the road. He shows you some photos, agrees a price and then asks you to give him the money there and then, promising he will go get the car and bring it to you in a week….
…. would you hand over the money and trust him to deliver the car? Of course not, so why do so many do it online, through eBay, Auto Trader and Gumtree ? Maybe it is because so many of us are used to buying things online these days we assume it is the norm, but just because that Tesco van arrives when they said it would (most of the time anyway) doesn’t mean everything will. Many people still commit the cardinal sin of clicking links in emails or don’t check the site they are visiting is the real thing. Remember, whether buying a vehicle listed online or in your local newspaper ALWAYS TOUCH THE METAL! The dead give away is usually the bargain price, a £15,000 Mercedez going for a song at £7,000 just because ” My husband died, I moved overseas and it brings me bad memories ” , I kid you not!
The listing platforms?
eBay, Auto Trader, Gumtree and the likes only act as the advertiser, they are not the ones selling the vehicles, but why don’t they spot the scams and remove them?
Auto Trader UK and eBay jointly have around 700,000 used vehicles listed at any one time, and despite their best efforts and considerable investment in the latest software designed to detect fraud, finding a scam or dealer who has had their account taken over can be like finding a needle in a haystack and a constant battle. Saying this, “seekers” ( unpaid volunteers who actively seek out these scam listings ) and on occasion myself, can quickly find them for free, so why not employ these seekers instead, it would be cheaper in the long run. I have approached the groups and offered assistance. let us see what develops.
The OCG’s – Organised Crime Groups?
Today’s technology increased reliance on it has spawned a relatively new breed of fraudsters and technology users, from my 9 year old daughter to my 72 year old mother, everyone uses technology in some shape or form every day. It is the equivalent of leaving your front door open in days gone by and the fraudsters are allowed to walk straight in if you are not careful. New scams and ways to get a hold of your hard earned cash are developed by the new generation of tech savvy criminals, based both here within the UK and across the globe. The majority of fraudsters carrying out Online Vehicle Purchase Fraud have been identified as being of Eastern European, particularly Romanian decent. This is not a UKIP Party Political Broadcast, it is fact, my extent of Romanian expletives has broadened throughout my investigations into this kind of fraud.
Individual sellers’ and Dealership accounts are taken over simply by a response to a phishing email that has been cleverly disguised to look like it is from the genuine source. Once they have your login details they have free reign to list as many things as they like, using your account and reputation.
Those 300 cars that “ABC Motors” have for sale at half the list price look like a bargain, maybe they are wanting to shift their old stock quickly, time to grab a bargain me thinks
If it is so easy to do, the £million rewards so great and the likely hood of been caught so low, can you blame them? Even I find it hard to sometimes, until I am reminded of the suffering and pain it causes so many people, mentally, physically let alone financially. Their ill gotten gains can also be linked to other serious crimes such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, child pornography, illegal firearms and terrorism. So that £1000 deposit you are so reluctant to report through fear of ridicule may well have contributed to one of the above, think again about not reporting it, although the chances of you ever seeing that money again are slim, I urge you to report every instance, no matter how small, even a phishing email that we may naturally just delete from our inbox.
The banks?
With over 50 million UK current accounts and trillions of payment transactions taking place across the world every day, looking for that needle in a haystack becomes more like looking for a pin head. Money mule accounts used for these frauds can be from a range of sources. Fake documents used to open accounts, dormant accounts of long gone migrant workers sold on to OCG’s, willing account holders happy to make 10% for allowing use of their account. There are even accounts offered for sale as I have seen on Silk Road, the dark underground Deepweb marketplace, high limit anonymous bank account packages with online banking and debit cards for the comparatively meagre sum of 2 Bitcoins.
Bank accounts are regulated by the FCA and should comply with, amongst others, Anti Money Laundering Regulations 2007 which cover Customer Due Diligence(CDD) checks and Know Your Customer(KYC) checks. These checks should be carried out when an account is opened and regularly throughout its use. Any suspicious activity should be identified, investigated and reported through Suspicious Activity Reports(SAR) by the nominated Money Laundering Reporting Officer(MLRO). It is clear that the systems for CDD, KYC and identifying these breaches by mule accounts is not sufficient, especially it seems by Barclays who appear to be the bank of choice for accounts used to carry fraudulent funds.
I have found, through the stories of victims and my own attempts, that all the banks approached to report loss or potential loss, have been far from cooperative when trying to notify them of a mule account. Even when the accounts are investigated and shuttered, what little of the remaining funds left in them appears to vanish into thin air, leaving victims in limbo or explanation of how to recover their loss. Yes the victims were foolish enough to make the payment in the first place, but who can they turn to for help recovering what to some is their life savings. Are they protected by the law, the regulators, the Government? apparently not!
Government & Police
The Government (no matter which party) controls legislation, regulation, budgets and national security (including online). £billions are lost from the UK economy through fraud of all types an amount the UK desperately needs right now. Policing costs money and lots of it, but it is well known that prevention costs less than investigation and prosecution. Legislation and regulation can be restrictive to commerce and growth. A balance needs to be struck across the board, regulations already in place need to be adhered to, legislation needs to be acted upon and budgets need to be targeted to give a good return of investment through education and preventing the enablers of fraud in the first place.
Simplisticly there are two types of fraud, the illegal gain of money or property and the illegal avoidance of losing it. Fraud affects us all, you may have even been guilty of it yourself, an over exaggerated insurance claim perhaps, “why not? I paid my premiums for 15 years without a claim!”.
It may not feel like fraud to some people, but it is, and our own attitude to fraud needs to change otherwise……………who is to blame?
Read more at: http://legalbeagles.info/how-scamawa...#ixzz319dPcJM1
More...
Scam, con, swindle, extortion, sham, double-cross, hoax, cheat, ploy, ruse, hoodwink, confidence trick, all words we use to describe fraud, you have probably heard all these and more, but do you know the different methods used by the fraudsters?
Action Fraud publish an A – Z of the different Frauds and Scams used everyday, below is a small selection you have probably seen before,such as ID theft, Lottery Scams, Mass Mailing and Spamming, but what about the others?
Would you know the difference between phishing, vishing and smishing? Who has heard of tabnapping or botnetting?
Make sure you are #scamaware and read up on the different types of Fraud to help prevent you becoming a victim. Take, for example, what should be straight forward, looking for and buying your next car. On top of the usual pitfalls of avoiding buying a pile of junk, held together by body filler and newspaper and more oil leaks than the Deepwater Horizon, there are now a myriad of obstacles to negotiate. Phishing, account take over, money mules, money laundering, advance fee fraud, auction fraud, ID theft, overpayment fraud and the biggest kick in the teeth, Fraud Recovery Fraud, to name just a few. If you have been a victim or suspect fraud/attempted fraud of any kind no matter how small REPORT IT TO ACTION FRAUD!
Prompted by the increase in Online Vehicle Purchase Fraud victims appearing on the LegalBEAGLES consumer forum and in conjunction with the Anti Fraud work we carry out, we decided to dig deeper. I wrote to the City of London Police to request information about Online Vehicle Purchase Fraud and the extent of the effect to the UK consumers, businesses and others. The figures were quite staggering, with over £17.8M being lost through online listing platforms such as eBay, Auto Trader, Gumtree etc. who despite issuing warnings to buyers still fail to get their message across. Coincidentally? Days before I received the figures CoLP issued a press release highlighting the numbers.
In reality this probably only represents approximately 10% of the true extent as many victims fail to report it or reports are incorrectly processed or categorised bringing the estimated losses to almost £180M, a healthy incentive for the fraudsters to develop new methods to catch us out, knowing their chances of being caught are minimal. So far only a tiny handful of those responsible have been identified and prosecuted, hardly a deterrent as they know the resources available to identify and combat it are limited.
So who is to blame? The unwitting victim, the listing platforms, the highly organised crime groups, the banks or the Police & Government?
In truth it is a combination of “all the above”, but why?
The Unwitting Victim?
Let us consider the old adage ” if it looks too good to be true it probably is! “ a phrase we all are aware of or should be.
During a recent meeting with the National Crime Agency’s Economic Crime Command it was summed up in the following way…
….you are in the pub discussing buying a new car and someone hiding behind a mask were to approach you and tell you he had exactly what you were looking for in his garage down the road. He shows you some photos, agrees a price and then asks you to give him the money there and then, promising he will go get the car and bring it to you in a week….
…. would you hand over the money and trust him to deliver the car? Of course not, so why do so many do it online, through eBay, Auto Trader and Gumtree ? Maybe it is because so many of us are used to buying things online these days we assume it is the norm, but just because that Tesco van arrives when they said it would (most of the time anyway) doesn’t mean everything will. Many people still commit the cardinal sin of clicking links in emails or don’t check the site they are visiting is the real thing. Remember, whether buying a vehicle listed online or in your local newspaper ALWAYS TOUCH THE METAL! The dead give away is usually the bargain price, a £15,000 Mercedez going for a song at £7,000 just because ” My husband died, I moved overseas and it brings me bad memories ” , I kid you not!
The listing platforms?
eBay, Auto Trader, Gumtree and the likes only act as the advertiser, they are not the ones selling the vehicles, but why don’t they spot the scams and remove them?
Auto Trader UK and eBay jointly have around 700,000 used vehicles listed at any one time, and despite their best efforts and considerable investment in the latest software designed to detect fraud, finding a scam or dealer who has had their account taken over can be like finding a needle in a haystack and a constant battle. Saying this, “seekers” ( unpaid volunteers who actively seek out these scam listings ) and on occasion myself, can quickly find them for free, so why not employ these seekers instead, it would be cheaper in the long run. I have approached the groups and offered assistance. let us see what develops.
The OCG’s – Organised Crime Groups?
Today’s technology increased reliance on it has spawned a relatively new breed of fraudsters and technology users, from my 9 year old daughter to my 72 year old mother, everyone uses technology in some shape or form every day. It is the equivalent of leaving your front door open in days gone by and the fraudsters are allowed to walk straight in if you are not careful. New scams and ways to get a hold of your hard earned cash are developed by the new generation of tech savvy criminals, based both here within the UK and across the globe. The majority of fraudsters carrying out Online Vehicle Purchase Fraud have been identified as being of Eastern European, particularly Romanian decent. This is not a UKIP Party Political Broadcast, it is fact, my extent of Romanian expletives has broadened throughout my investigations into this kind of fraud.
Individual sellers’ and Dealership accounts are taken over simply by a response to a phishing email that has been cleverly disguised to look like it is from the genuine source. Once they have your login details they have free reign to list as many things as they like, using your account and reputation.
Those 300 cars that “ABC Motors” have for sale at half the list price look like a bargain, maybe they are wanting to shift their old stock quickly, time to grab a bargain me thinks
If it is so easy to do, the £million rewards so great and the likely hood of been caught so low, can you blame them? Even I find it hard to sometimes, until I am reminded of the suffering and pain it causes so many people, mentally, physically let alone financially. Their ill gotten gains can also be linked to other serious crimes such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, child pornography, illegal firearms and terrorism. So that £1000 deposit you are so reluctant to report through fear of ridicule may well have contributed to one of the above, think again about not reporting it, although the chances of you ever seeing that money again are slim, I urge you to report every instance, no matter how small, even a phishing email that we may naturally just delete from our inbox.
The banks?
With over 50 million UK current accounts and trillions of payment transactions taking place across the world every day, looking for that needle in a haystack becomes more like looking for a pin head. Money mule accounts used for these frauds can be from a range of sources. Fake documents used to open accounts, dormant accounts of long gone migrant workers sold on to OCG’s, willing account holders happy to make 10% for allowing use of their account. There are even accounts offered for sale as I have seen on Silk Road, the dark underground Deepweb marketplace, high limit anonymous bank account packages with online banking and debit cards for the comparatively meagre sum of 2 Bitcoins.
Bank accounts are regulated by the FCA and should comply with, amongst others, Anti Money Laundering Regulations 2007 which cover Customer Due Diligence(CDD) checks and Know Your Customer(KYC) checks. These checks should be carried out when an account is opened and regularly throughout its use. Any suspicious activity should be identified, investigated and reported through Suspicious Activity Reports(SAR) by the nominated Money Laundering Reporting Officer(MLRO). It is clear that the systems for CDD, KYC and identifying these breaches by mule accounts is not sufficient, especially it seems by Barclays who appear to be the bank of choice for accounts used to carry fraudulent funds.
I have found, through the stories of victims and my own attempts, that all the banks approached to report loss or potential loss, have been far from cooperative when trying to notify them of a mule account. Even when the accounts are investigated and shuttered, what little of the remaining funds left in them appears to vanish into thin air, leaving victims in limbo or explanation of how to recover their loss. Yes the victims were foolish enough to make the payment in the first place, but who can they turn to for help recovering what to some is their life savings. Are they protected by the law, the regulators, the Government? apparently not!
Government & Police
The Government (no matter which party) controls legislation, regulation, budgets and national security (including online). £billions are lost from the UK economy through fraud of all types an amount the UK desperately needs right now. Policing costs money and lots of it, but it is well known that prevention costs less than investigation and prosecution. Legislation and regulation can be restrictive to commerce and growth. A balance needs to be struck across the board, regulations already in place need to be adhered to, legislation needs to be acted upon and budgets need to be targeted to give a good return of investment through education and preventing the enablers of fraud in the first place.
Simplisticly there are two types of fraud, the illegal gain of money or property and the illegal avoidance of losing it. Fraud affects us all, you may have even been guilty of it yourself, an over exaggerated insurance claim perhaps, “why not? I paid my premiums for 15 years without a claim!”.
It may not feel like fraud to some people, but it is, and our own attitude to fraud needs to change otherwise……………who is to blame?
Read more at: http://legalbeagles.info/how-scamawa...#ixzz319dPcJM1
More...
